Are You Stuck in Now or Focused On the (Pretty Near) Future?
In conversation with a financial advisor yesterday, I made my prediction:
You know what’s coming?
Eighteen bad months, and then…
The 1950s.
It’s gonna hurt and then whoosh, it’s gonna take off.
People who know that and can handle it have a lion in their pocket right now.
Controversial? Maybe, but an average recession in the U.S lasts only 11 months. This one looks to be rather above-average (below?) which should result in an above-average expansion, too. Expansions last an average of six years.
Get your head out of the sand. See the big picture. Put a lion in your pocket today.
Plan, prepare, and perfect now for growth in the pretty near future—18 months goes by in a flash.
Grow and be well,
Kelly Erickson
P.S. If you haven’t had a lion in your pocket for a while, click here for a flashback to the roaring 80s. The Purple One doesn’t let his vids stay on You Tube, so I can’t embed it to inspire you.
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13 October 2008, 9:12 am
Kelly, I agree. I heard someone say this morning that 5 years from now we would look back and remark at what a great time it was to buy stocks in 2008. Our grandparents survived the Great Depression, we lived through the boom and fall of dot coms and 911 – this too shall pass.
Karen Swim’s last blog post…5 Sizzling Tips to Fire Up Your Marketing
13 October 2008, 10:57 am
This too shall pass… Totally! I’m not sure I want a lion in my pocket — ouch! — but I’m not so worried about any of this.
Amy Derby’s last blog post…Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Conquering Stress Addiction
13 October 2008, 1:29 pm
Exactly. I am going to write a little about this shortly (one more Thanksgiving dinner to go to, just got back and reading my important feeds and email).
I have my own thoughts and feelings about this “credit crisis” and I believe this is not only a good thing, but the biggest damned opportunity for those who are ready in a long, long time.
In fact, I’ll be shooting an email your way in a couple of days as a sort of follow-up to the exchange we had a while back. I think I’ve almost figured it out.
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post…gone pillaging.
13 October 2008, 3:01 pm
Hi Kelly,
Although there are some grave issues here including high levels of both personal and governmental debt, I think the biggest threat to economic stability right now is CNN. In a quest to boost ratings, they pronounce doom and gloom — injected with little bits of hope to keep everyone hooked.
And since recession/depression is quite often a psychological response to a situation rather than a truly economic response, this does not help matters.
Nothing feeds CNN like a good disaster. Makes you wonder if too much media is in the hands of too few people…
~Graham
Graham Strong’s last blog post…One Great Resource for Boosting Blog Traffic
13 October 2008, 3:57 pm
Karen,
I was just talking to someone today who said, “For folks who heard stories from their parents or grandparents about the Depression, this is traumatic.”
I said, “My grandmother was a young girl who lived in a pickup truck with her parents and sister and picked fruit as a migrant worker for several years on the west coast until they could afford to return home to Connecticut. HOW is this traumatic?”
People have got this panicking all out of proportion—especially businesspeople, who we’ll need to pull us out of this funk.
Amy,
Glad you’ve got a good head on your shoulders about it, too.
Brett,
“The biggest damned opportunity for those who are ready.” I can’t see the future, but I’m right there with you on that. People our age often howl that we didn’t get to live through the “easy” growth of the 1950s. The way things look right now I think that is exactly what’s coming. I’d love to see a newspaper from ten or fifteen years from now, to see how short-sighted all this gloom and doom really is.
Too many turkeys makes Brett a sleepy Daddy… enjoy it. Happy Thanksgiving. How nice to be one of the important feeds.
Regards,
Kelly
13 October 2008, 4:04 pm
Oops! Hi, Graham!
I hear you. What’s the job of television programs? To sell ads.
How do they do that? Glue eyeballs to t.v. sets.
How to glue those eyeballs? Make news out of anything that moves. Better still if you can make something move, like the stock markets, then cover that news. It’s a very stinky cycle.
About the psychology: they don’t call it “depression” for nothing, IMHO. Depressed business valuations results in depressed humans. Depressed humans don’t act, they react. Hence the problems we face right now.
Snap out of it, globe!
Until later,
Kelly
13 October 2008, 8:14 pm
Kelly,
You’ve got a razor-sharp bunch here tonight. Yeah… TV shows, they are designed to keep you focused on the TV until the adverts come on, nothing more. I still remember back when “pay TV” was going to be the next big thing, no commercials… even my teenage brain said at that time, “yeah, right, how long until the commercials are back”.
Crisis my donkey, more like engineered chaos and disorder to whip up panic, cause stocks to drop, let a few of those orchestrating it move in to buy low, then flip it when it jumps back up. Let’s say you bought when it was down at 7900, today it closed at almost 9400 – so if you bought the right mix of stocks, or if you were making money off of each trade… well, I don’t know enough about this to get the details right, but that’s a 17 percent fluctuation between Friday and Monday.
Smells kind of stinky to me.
-Brett
Brett Legree’s last blog post…gone pillaging.
13 October 2008, 11:29 pm
Brett,
Your donkey too?
The world needs to calm down. Stinky, maybe, but a stink we all went along with. Remember Don Henley’s Dirty Laundry? Could have been written yesterday.
Whether anyone intended to engineer it or not, the level-headed people are going to recover a lot faster. I don’t begrudge those who figure it out sooner. I like the free(ish) market system.
I’m shouting because I’m surprised at how few people see this as the time to act—in the markets, yes, but also in their businesses. That’s what makes it worse: Pulling back instead of strengthening their position. Waiting it out instead of leading the recovery.
Heh, wish I had bought at 7900. I love a Clearance sale!
Later,
Kelly
17 October 2008, 8:18 am
>>Brett: “engineered chaos and disorder to whip up panic,” you are exactly right, the scary part is, I can’t see which bunch benefits the most. Whoever it is, they are going to want to be careful, go to search.twitter.com and put in “John Galt”.
Where is Galt’s Gulch? It’s in the Cloud. It’s in the barter system. I am sure that “Joe the Plumber” can do a lot of small jobs in exchange for food, for gasoline, for all sorts of things that can’t be taxed in the transaction.
The American people are smarter than the American government. By an order of magnitude. If there is a way around this, we’ll find it.
17 October 2008, 9:10 am
@Stephen,
Exactly. That, I believe, is one possible path forward – a return to the old ways, ways that haven’t really gone away in lots of places (for instance, where I live – the barter / favour system). You scratch my back, I scratch yours, you fix my car, I help you fix your barn.
Tax that, taxman.
Brett Legree’s last blog post…gone pillaging.
17 October 2008, 3:50 pm
You do know, guys, that barter is taxable, right?
If you fix my barn, though, I’ll overlook it.
17 October 2008, 4:29 pm
It’s only taxable if it’s trackable…you and I are the only ones that know about the exchange. What Uncle Sam can’t see, Uncle Sam can’t tax.
17 October 2008, 10:06 pm
@Stephen,
Oh yes. The US Air Force and Lockheed may have introduced stealth technology to the world, but we can borrow it
Brett Legree’s last blog post…blog action day 2008 – picking up the gauntlet.